1 day of hyper/manic Elderly Father

[Ritaskitchen]

DF (79) has a diagnosis of depression (medicated but doesn’t seem to have an effect) and Alzheimer’s. He was diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s this year from CT scan. He takes medication for the Alzheimer’s.
He has developed a rather rigid routine of activities and wanting to be out of the house and walking. He is a reluctant bather - can go 3 weeks without a bath. Also has incontinence issued - appointment with clinic soon.
When not at his many activities he lies motionless on the sofa.
He has now had 2 episodes of a sort of mania/hyperactivity. Once when DM had a serious cancer operation and yesterday.
He wakes up and is very animated, yesterday he announced he was cured. Makes grandiose and expansive plans, spends money with abandon, talks non stop.
Is this part of Alzheimer’s? Or something else. Today he back to his usual depressed self. Has slept either in bed or in his chair for the majority of the day

He sounds as if he needs to see a doctor to be honest, he could be undergoing a mental health crisis which can happen with dementia - my Nan had vascular dementia with a side of psychosis! At age 91. She was treated for the psychosis successfully in an EMI unit.

I also think he needs a medical review. It could be the antidepressants?

If his hygiene is not great, be aware of UTIs, they cause very weird behaviour in the elderly.

Thanks. Doctors appointment planned for today. Let’s see what he says.

Most likely confused from a uti that or it's the ahlizmers. My nan used to say she was planning to climb Mount everest.

It’s definitely not a UTI. He’s back to his normal activities today.
I highly suspect he has adhd. So I’m wondering if this plus a change in routine of myself and my sister and her dogs visiting has sort of set it off.

FWIW my FiL would have the odd nervous breakdown in his 70s. He'd had some traumatic stuff happen to him earlier in life, and so, people might make innocent enquiries about, you know, WWII, and the next thing you knew he was running up and down the corridor singing, and quite floridly off his rocker. A few days heavily drugged enforced rest usually sorted him out.

The first thing that sprung to my mind - apart from the Alzheimer's - is that he might have bipolar. However, with any neurological complaint and with the associated medications, behaviour can be affected sometimes simply because his brain chemistry might well be all over the place. My father didn't have dementia but he did have a neurological disease and he had some very manic, agitated episodes at times - one day he'd be incredibly miserable and unmotivated and couldn't be bothered with anthing, and the next he'd suddenly decided to start clearing out the loft or digging a pond at 6am and nothing would stop him from these mad bursts of activity. He would sometimes announce with great confidence some grandiose plan like training to be a pilot (in his late 70s with serious disabilities) or building a bungalow single-handed. Obviously these things didn't happen but he would get very engrossed in trying to plan them.

Thank you this is really helpful @TheLastSilverSaint I called the local dementia service today. My DF is on their books. They said it’s not typical for Alzheimers. She asked me if I had any concerns for my DF welfare. I said no because he was with family but that had we chosen to he would have brought us anything we wanted that day. A car, a new sofa. He was talking about buying a new car in the afternoon. In the morning he was saying that he loved the car he had. So complete U turn.
I think I’ll write to the GP (again)

My father in law had very rigid set routines, and almost certainly would have had an autism diagnosis if that had been a "thing" when he was younger. He lived with a fast-moving and extremely debilitating form of dementia, which only exacerbated his need for routine. But sometimes if he was jarred out of this routine, he would have these frightening hypermanic states, where he became violent, aggressive, roamed around, etc.

As he was aphasic, he couldn't communicate how he was feeling at those times, we suspect he had something urgent he needed to communicate but couldn't. Very likely it was distress at being knocked out of his routine, especially as his aphasia worked both ways - so he could neither understand or communicate, so he wouldn't have had an idea in advance what was happening.